Dr. Marus or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the RB26DETT

[Oakville]

Funny, turns out a wallpaper of your car was my first ever facebook cover photo!

[curtisgoodman]

great write up man keep up the good work!!!

[collector240sx]

It was a 10 mm wrench, and I couldn't find it when I put all the tools away.
Good thing we check to make sure the bleeder screw on the slave was thigh before you left, it was still attached to it. lol

Good write up man, can't wait for summer to be here.

[MarusGTR]

2012


^{Pictured 2012}

2012______________________________________________ _____________________________

The serious business.

Again, the 2011 off season consisted of myself lurking GTRC and buying parts. But this time I was more familiarized with the car's (stock) performance and I was getting the itch to finally realize my lifelong dream of taking an R32 GTR to the track. With Bobbo posting in the eastern section about his various escapades at Atlantic Motorsport Park I immediatly jumped on the occasion and started to PM him to get some information.It didn't take long for me to get a membership to the ASCC but there was always the issue of distance. Being in northern New-Brunswick, AMP was more than 400kms away.

Contrary to winter 2010 where the car was left in a horrible shelter in an even more horrible dampest/thawest winter in recent memory I had elected to store the GTR in Moncton at an old machine shop warehouse. The owner, an old machinist, takes in cars during winter to make a quick buck (and since the warehouse can hold more than 25 cars, it's a pretty penny). The cheap rent and totally dry environment made it the perfect choice.

So, recap. I was stuck in Bathurst; my GTR was in Moncton 250kms away and the track was 450kms away.How was I supposed to prep her for track? Picking up the car in Moncton -without an oil change- and driving it 250kms back to my parents and then drive it 450kms to the track wasn't worth the wear, tear, gas, time, etc. Since I didn't have issues with dragging my Sentra (DD) along and adding mileage to it, I asked 240sxcollector for some help. We would use his driveway to work on her.

I would make two trips to Moncton, one two-way, one one-way. One week before the ASCC performance driver course I drove to Moncton in the Sentra with the GTR's renewed insurance and plates, went by a friend's to say hello and finally stopped at Collector's place. He then drove me to the warehouse where I picked up the GTR. Interesting part right here: I had forgotten the papers at the first friend's house. I turn at look at Collector "What's the odds right? We're just 15 minutes away".

Yeah.

What happened next came pretty obvious when we drove up to a gridlock in a rural setting. Lo and behold, just in span of time it had took Collector and I to drive from his place to the warehouse, a police road block had been put up, looking for expired insurance and plates. So since I knew I had valid credentials, I called up my friend and told him to meet me up at a parking lot clear of the road block.

Since the cops were pretty far away, I assumed I could manage to sneak a U turn in the gridlock (cue Collector's facepalming). Apparently I did a crap job because 3 pursuit cars immediatly went after me full lights and bells and whistles. Maybe they were hoping for a high speed pursuit (I was flattered) but I was already pulled over by the time they caught up (the line was that long).

The cop gave me a $2000 ticket. Since I swallowed my pride and explained the reason why I was being such and idiot, he proposed an alternative: he'd scratch it off if I would cough up the papers before they would reopen the road block. Luckly my friend was home when I had called and he did bring back my papers in time. So my summer wasn't ruined, a good start.

So finally back at Collector's, we had a couple things to do:



-Oil change
-Fuel pump
-Divorced Y pipe outlet
-Clutch slave
-Rear wiper delete (I needed help since it was seized)

The oil change was straightforward, I opted for 5w-30 Royal Purple as we managed to get a decent deal on a quart case. The fuel pump was as a precautionary measure. Being that it's a forced induction engine and that the old pumps can fail, I didn't want to take chances on the track. Also back in 2011 I would often get a buzzing sound from the (since uninsulated) rear end of the car on idle, which I had assumed it was due to a faulting fuel pump.



After pulling the old pump out and playing with the old pump casing, we had a problem. I had assumed with the popularity of th 255lph Walbros as replacements that there wouldn't be any issues but the pump pickup was diametrically opposed to the old pump's. This meant that the casing would need some modifying, which Collector took on.







Next came the Y pipe. As I had mentionned, the old man that was housing my car was also a machinist. So during the winter I had purchased a spare Y pipe which I brought him to get it divorced before picking up the car.





The patterns in the original pipe still disturb me... what do those stains mean? They were dried up, but why were they on the superior part and not the bottom where you'd expect settling?

With the pump plummed the right way around (inside joke to why the engine wouldn't turn over) we moved on to the wiper. Taking the motor out was more than we bargained for as the spline shaft had expanded against the glass. It had to be slowly cut out chunk my chunk. All said and done it was well worth the trouble, it cleaned up the back very nicely.

Finally, the clutch slave had was replaced. As you might remember I had lost clutch pressure at the start of 2011 and I wasn't looking to lose pressure again and strip a few gears in the process. With the day coming to an end and our (his) work done and losing a wrench (or socket?, don't quite remember) in the enginebay somewhere I took her back to storage. The next weekend I could pick her up again but this time for a trip to AMP.

[MarusGTR]

*brofist*

[Oakville]

and I read a LOT of build threads. I think another thing that draws me here is because my story is very similar to yours. One day I hope to write it up like this...I should really start taking more photos haha

[MarusGTR]

This is by far my favourite build thread on the forum...I don't know why. I think it's because it has a lot of heart (no homo)

Wow thanks man that means a lot, especially since I'm falling into some real hard times lol.

[Oakville]

This is by far my favourite build thread on the forum...I don't know why. I think it's because it has a lot of heart (no homo)

[MarusGTR]

2011 Cont.

As I was due to come back to Moncton to resume my experiments I had bought and installed a seasonal shelter at the apartment. After my inspection I finally got to install the new wheels and tires, and sheduled an appointment with a local guy that runs his own little car detailing business. I wasn't about to let the other big places' teens drive my car -without me around- to just end up swirling the clear.

The reason for getting the detail was two-fold. The car needed some TLC for the dust but also the japanese owner had a real taste for the nicotine... and after X amount of cleaning the windows, the paper towels would still come up yellow.

The other was to replace the door trim and get the seats out to vacuum/shampoo them. All of this would be tricky for a fumbling greenhorn like me but luckily the guy was also a bodyshop repairman so he knew his way around disassembly. We took all the seats out and while he'd wash them for the 10th time (totally serious) I was inside and realized that by removing the fabric insulation that had adhered to the tar it would look kickass. The added space was another plus.

With the car cleaned I finalized the rejuvination with a resoration of the really ugly sun bleached lip. After the years and neglect, the lip had been improperly mounted and was getting peach fuzz from the plastic rubbing againsts objects. With Krylon paint and some careful prepping, I sanded the surfaces smooth and painted the lip. I even took the can to the the color-flat portions of the bumper. And boy did it ever do the trick.



A little afterwards when the car was ready, I packed and left my parents' house an evening from Bathurst for Moncton with the ATESSA still in RWD.

Later during the night on the road then I noticed that my N1 headlights had High beams for Low beams and what I think the the fog lights (the more circular beams on the N1s?) were my High beams. Whatever trick had been needed for the aftermarket foglights I had cut out had made a mess of things. But I had High beams, it's what really matters. Still haven't fixed them.



She was starting to look decent, I had brought her a long way back from her confinement in a warehouse. There was still work to be done, but the rest of the summer would be just enjoying her on sunny days.

And then on a hot day I was really happy the RB26 was an inline engine. As I was driving I started smelling fuel, which was pretty worrisome since I was going at 60kph, a speed where you shouldn't smell fresh gas. I was far from home so I pulled over and checked under the hood, everything seemed in place but I decided on driving back home without going into boost and then check with a flashlight in the shelter for more focus.

Back at the apartment, I started looking at my chassis rail, passenger side with the engine off. I was damp with fuel. I cranked the engine back up and started prodding at the fuel filter, thinking that it might have been a loose coupling because we had recently changed it. As I flexed the inlet hose it litterally started to split appart at the seams and fuel was spraying everywhere. I just shut off the car and realized how this could of ended if it would of been a V6. The hose had been so dried and brittle that the rubber was only holding at the nylon webbing, everything in between was splitting.

Obviously this needed to get fixed and I found some replacement hose after trying Princess Auto. The only reason why I'm telling this, is I still regret not catching on that the clerk that had helped me might had been hitting on me by saying that her -ex- had blown his turbos off his own GTR the same week he had gotten it.

Anyway, I made sure to mention it wouldn't happen so soon to me.

Also around the same time I was starting to worry about the state of the ATESSA that was still running in RWD after more than 1000kms. I had started to look into the code before leaving but hadn't had time to diagnose the G sensor. I took it appart and quickly confirmed it was bad even if the trip tube was still white. I then bought a G sensor off a GTRC member which got tripped in the mail. While the AWD would work, the transfercase would jerk power to the front wheels in quick sporadic jolts, it felt very wrong even with recalibration of the potentiometers (which I did myself with a multimeter and precision screw driver).



By that time 240sxcollector had popped up on my GTRC radar; as local Moncton GTR owner, he graciously lent me his GTR's sensor to confirm -again- that I had a bad G sensor as his gave smooth power to the front if hardly any. The craziest thing in all this is that through all the G sensors I've come across, I remember my original G sensor to be the only one that had ever given me at least half way on the torque gauge. Since the GTR G sensors are piezoelectic sponge types, I can only assume that they get less responsive with age.

So why wasn't this bought up more often I wonder? Even through my calibration I had noticed that a good G sensor was a few Vs off.

With this came the end of anything noteworthy for 2011...

[MarusGTR]

Hey guys, thanks for the support! I'll continue the story soon. I just wasn't around the laptop for a while (a rare occurence) but I'm back.

I'll also do a cleanup of some typos I noticed, grammar, missng parts and other details that I've just remembered.

[tman7878]

Nothing shoddy about this thread! Great story man, keep it coming!


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[Rush_in]

very well written! those headlights are mad sexy YO!

[GTS-TTime]

Awesome thread!

[quadracer111]

I like this thread. Keep er going! Gives me motivation to buy stuff for my car.

[Woodly]

I think it's an amazing start, looking forward to more!